V oice profiling aims at inferring various human parameters from their speech, e.g.

Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

We introduce machine unlearning for speech tasks, a novel and underexplored research problem that aims to efficiently and effectively remove the influence of specific data from trained speech models without full retraining. This has important applications in privacy preservation, removal of outdated or noisy data, and bias mitigation. While machine unlearning has been studied in computer vision and natural language processing, its application to speech is largely unexplored due to the high-dimensional, sequential, and speaker-dependent nature of speech data. We define two fundamental speech unlearning tasks: sample unlearning, which removes individual data points (e.g., a voice recording), and class unlearning, which removes an entire category (e.g., all data from a speaker), while preserving performance on the remaining data. Experiments on keyword spotting and speaker identification demonstrate that unlearning speech data is significantly more challenging than unlearning image or text data. We conclude with key future directions in this area, including structured training, robust evaluation, feature-level unlearning, broader applications, scalable methods, and adversarial robustness.

Amazon has disabled two key privacy features in its Alexa smart speakers, in a push to introduce artificial intelligence-powered "agentic capabilities" and turn a profit from the popular devices. Starting from March 28, Alexa devices now send all audio recordings to the cloud for processing, and choosing not to save these recordings will disable personalisation features. A voice assistant works by constantly listening for a "wake word", such as "Alexa". Once woken, it records the command that is spoken and matches it to an action, such as playing a music track. Matching a spoken command to an action requires what computer scientists call natural language understanding, which can take a lot of computer power. Matching commands to actions can be done locally (on the device itself), or sound recordings can be uploaded to the cloud for processing.

Since Amazon announced plans for a generative AI version of Alexa, we were concerned about user privacy. With Alexa rolling out to Amazon Echo devices in the coming weeks, we're getting a clearer view of the privacy concessions people will have to make to maximize usage of the AI voice assistant and avoid bricking functionality of already-purchased devices. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon's cloud.

But if you have an Amazon Echo, there's bad news for you - as Amazon is about to controversially kill a popular privacy feature. Until now, some Amazon Echo devices have had the option to process commands locally'on-device', keeping your voice within the confines of your home. But from March 28, all Alexa-powered Echo smart speakers will send your voice recordings to the cloud, whether you like it or not. Cory Doctorow, a blogger and expert on digital rights management, called it'absolutely unforgivable' because it will let Amazon workers snoop on all Echo recordings. Amazon has already received criticism for storing conversations users have with Alexa, which have been listened to and transcribed by staff, it admitted in 2019.

As of March 28, Amazon Echo models that were previously able to process Alexa requests locally will no longer do so, instead sending those voice recordings to the cloud. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the change to The Verge after a Reddit user posted a PSA about it on Friday, with a screenshot of an email they'd received from the company. The change applies to the Echo Dot (4th Gen), Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15, according to The Verge. Per the email shared on Reddit, the settings for Echo users who enabled the'Do Not Send Voice Recordings' option will automatically change to'Don't save recordings.' It goes on to say, "This means that, starting on March 28th, your voice recordings will be sent to and processed in the cloud, and they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests. Any previously saved voice recordings will also be deleted."

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neuro-developmental challenge, presenting a spectrum of difficulties in social interaction, communication, and the expression of repetitive behaviors in different situations. This increasing prevalence underscores the importance of ASD as a major public health concern and the need for comprehensive research initiatives to advance our understanding of the disorder and its early detection methods. This study introduces a novel hierarchical feature fusion method aimed at enhancing the early detection of ASD in children through the analysis of code-switched speech (English and Hindi). Employing advanced audio processing techniques, the research integrates acoustic, paralinguistic, and linguistic information using Transformer Encoders. This innovative fusion strategy is designed to improve classification robustness and accuracy, crucial for early and precise ASD identification. The methodology involves collecting a code-switched speech corpus, CoSAm, from children diagnosed with ASD and a matched control group. The dataset comprises 61 voice recordings from 30 children diagnosed with ASD and 31 from neurotypical children, aged between 3 and 13 years, resulting in a total of 159.75 minutes of voice recordings. The feature analysis focuses on MFCCs and extensive statistical attributes to capture speech pattern variability and complexity. The best model performance is achieved using a hierarchical fusion technique with an accuracy of 98.75% using a combination of acoustic and linguistic features first, followed by paralinguistic features in a hierarchical manner.

A New Jersey couple woke up to a 67-minute-long voicemail from an'unknown caller' - and discovered it was left by their Amazon Alexa. 'I was checking the message ... and was like, wait, this is me talking in the bedroom,' she said. Alexa can call your smartphone if you trigger the'Find My Phone' feature, but a company spokesperson said the Amazon Echo doesn't record or store conversations unless it hears the'wake word,' prompting a light on the device to turn on to let you know it's listening. Amazon has come under fire for its devices recording conversations and faced two separate privacy violation lawsuits last year, including a claim that it had violated children's privacy rights by refusing to remove the recording history of minors. A judge ruled that the company had to pay out a collective 30.8 million for both violations. 'There wasn't a lot of talking in the message, mostly bleeping,' Creegan said, but added that she could hear snippets of her telling Alexa to'turn the lights off' adding that there was'two or three sentences of me talking to the dog.

An artificial intelligence tool can detect autism spectrum disorder with 100-percent accuracy, just by scanning images of children's eyes, according to a new study. If confirmed, this would be a major breakthrough for detecting the condition. But multiple autism experts told DailyMail.com Autism affects an estimated 1 in 36 children in the US, but many children remain undiagnosed until later in childhood, depriving them of potential therapies. If a technological solution could help cut down on long waits for autism specialists or other obstacles to diagnosis, it could benefit millions of families.